Inspirations

Every day F writes in a book - by hand the old-fashioned way with joined up writing.  I think it's code.  Real writing is done on a keyboard - right?  She calls it a diary and judging by the heavy box in the bottom of the wardrobe she's been writing these diaries for years.

It wasn't until she started working from home that I actually saw her doing it every day and paid attention.  She says it isn't deep - just a record of things seen, places been, ideas to blog.  Hang on a minute.  I have the ideas to blog; IT'S MY BLOG (It's in the name: Tigger's Wee Blog.)

She stopped buying books set out with dated pages about 18 years ago and now simply writes in any old blank book and there is a mad and motley collection of them in that cardboard box.  (I've pulled it open to look inside.)

There is not much by way of illustration - a few theatre tickets, the occasional postcard, a special train ticket, stuff like that.  She says she writes because apart from being exercise for the brain and fine motor skills, she finds it calming and meditational, and sometimes finds herself reaching for the book when she in fact has nothing particular to write about.

A couple of years ago, in her search for the next book to write in she found this and decided it was time to add other experiments to her books - so the next one got all its pages stained with food stuffs (pomegranate juice was a good one).  When she ran out of food ideas she just painted pictures with water colours and then wrote over them.  (It seems that food doesn't stain diaries as effectively as it stains human clothes.)

Last year (and this is where my story for today starts) F wanted some inspiration - real inspiration, ideas for making life changes, and she started sticking anything she found inspirational into the pages of her journal.  The idea was (and still is) that in a year or so she would review all these inspirations with the benefit of a little distance and see whether they distill into a plan for life after Greece, whether they point to a passion to pursue, or a place to be, or people to join in a common goal.  It's meant to take impulsiveness out of a really big life decision.  Everything else in life has been done on impulse and maybe it's time to make a plan???

Speaking as a cat I find that letting life come to you has worked for me (well apart from the 'this is your life' decision I made when I adopted Mr B).

We were looking at that diary the other day and I suggested to her that we could occasionally add one of its 'inspirations' to my blog - I'd let her do that.  It might help us to imagine our way out of this lockdown and have more distant horizons (yes even more distant than the one we view daily) to lift our minds to and contemplate.

Hope is a powerful thing.